


A Brother's Burden

by dogmatix, norcumi



Series: Teeny Tiny Mandalorian Kenobis [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, GFY, M/M, Post Order 66, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Tiny Cloned Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 04:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3923512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogmatix/pseuds/dogmatix, https://archiveofourown.org/users/norcumi/pseuds/norcumi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cody has no idea why Rex contacts him out of the blue, asking if he wants a drink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brother's Burden

Cody has no idea why Rex contacts him out of the blue, asking if he wants a drink.

He doesn’t, not really. He tries not to drink too much, because then he starts eyeing his blasters, and his blank ‘trooper armor, and those fucking natural-born assholes he’s expected to make soldiers out of.

The math is often too tempting, through the bottle, because the result almost comes down to zero.

He gives Rex the location of a nasty little cantina anyways. It’s a pit, run by a bastard of a Sep sympathizer from back in the day. Sells drinks like cooling fluid, bad spice at outrageous mark-ups, and the fucker in charge loves seeing old clones poison themselves into oblivion. He’s happy to take their credits and insult them for the privilege.

It’s not someplace folks will notice them, though. It’s a risk, meeting up with a deserter, but…They’re brothers. He never blamed Rex for pulling a runner; you’d have to be blind or willfully ignorant as a Jedi to not see how he had been about Kenobi, even if his brother had never said anything.

He can tell Rex is dancing around something, something big, but he can’t figure it out and in no small part he finds it hard to care. Rex looks good, if stressed, weirdly drawn around the eyes. He figures the man is about five minutes from either admitting to whatever the hell is going on, or dropping the conversation entirely, when he feels the first brush of the Force on his mind. Cody jerks upright, his head snapping around to glare at the rear exit, and something breaks inside of him.

Of course it would come to this. That’s how it goes. For all that, he refuses to let Rex get caught up in the middle of things. “Go,” he snaps, standing and moving casually towards the rear of the cantina. He takes enough time to see Rex saunter out the front door and break into a jog away.

Then Cody hustles to the back, drawing his guns. General Kenobi taught him, once upon too much of a lifetime ago, how to trace back the sensation of the Force upon one’s mind. It’s more about finding a direction and looking, then getting lucky, since anyone with serious skill can redirect things, but he’s willing to bet that whatever Jedi came hunting Kenobi’s killer _wants_ him to find them.

He shoves the back door open, guns ready.

He’s aiming at two small boys. His first thought is to check himself, lift his weapons away from younglings who are in totally the wrong place.

His second thought is more of a mental scream. He stares, not even realizing he’s dropped his guns, as a set of wide, impossible eyes stare back.

His General. Twice his General, too young, too small, too fucking _impossible_.

The sound of pounding feet jerks them out of their stunned staring contest. Cody looks above their heads to see Rex hurtling around the corner, wrist-com raised as he snarls into it. “Dammit Racin, don’t wait in the future! This is an emergency, that’s what the emergency channel is _for_ – oh _fuck_.”

The boys twitch, but not as if the language is unexpectedly crass or if they’re frightened. They look like they want to run _to_ Rex.

His brother has locked eyes with Cody, and Rex’s face is pale. “Get back to the ship,” he snarls. “Move!”

The broken thing inside Cody writhes as the boys shuffle away from him, the smaller one glaring at him, the other seeming dumbstruck still.

He somehow manages to wait until they’re past Rex and around the corner, then he bares his teeth because that’s the closest he’ll let himself get to a scream. “What the hell did you _do?_ ”

He’s not used to seeing Rex, of all brothers, looking bitter, let alone _that_ bitter. “What do you think?” he snaps, and the broken thing shreds further.

“You demented _fucker_!” Cody is moving before he can think it through, grabbing Rex by the shirt and slamming him against the wall. “He’s _dead,_ ” he howls in Rex’s face, “we all saw to that! We can’t bring them back, we can’t undo what we did!”

Fury contorts Rex’s face, and he snarls right back. “You think I –?!” He shoves Cody away, the two spinning to face each other like the old days when sparring, but this is all too serious. “That’s not why! It’s not – They’re _kids_ , you twisted Hutt shit!”

He honestly can’t figure out _why_ Rex would try to resurrect his dead lover if not for exactly that reason. “We grew up fast enough, how the hell should I know what –”

“They’re part of the Jedi legacy! It needs to be more than a handful of clones and a bunch of slaves to an Empire, bloodstains and whispers and a place in the history books as _traitors_!”

Cody takes a swing, expecting Rex to dodge to the right the way he does, but not the grappling hold that’s the follow through. He ends up shoved face first into the wall, because Rex isn’t the kind of brother to not make some retaliation like that.

“ _Yes_ , they’re kids!” he hisses in Cody’s ear, and for a minute he just _stands_ there, shaking as he keeps Cody up against the durracrete. The he sighs, deflating a little, but not enough to let go. “Gods help me, they’re _my_ kids. And I don’t know if I can handle them all.”

He goes cold, then shoves Rex back. He snaps a quick kick at his demented brother, making Rex skip another pace away. “Fuck, there’s more than two, aren’t there! _What did you do?_ ”

“ _One_! I made a deal for one!” Rex snarls, as if that could somehow make things better. “And you know what? They’re all numbers in the high forties! The rest were _culled_ , damn you! Do you really, honestly think I would have _anything_ to do with that?”

“You had enough to do with it to get at least three!” Cody shakes his head, unable to believe Rex is lying to himself like this, justifying this madness to himself.

“You think I’m the only one?” Rex’s voice is almost shrill in disbelief. “You think those are the only miniature Jedi running around with their Commanders?”

Cody goes still, because it’s the only way to not throw himself at the bastard and let the consequences burn. Behind his eyes, he sees a falling body, a varactyl dead still and limp, falling near it. “You were never _his_ Commander,” he hisses instead, shaking the nightmares of Utapau to the back of his mind where they live.

“No,” Rex agrees. “But from what I hear you didn’t even try to find his body.”

“Like you can talk! You _defected_! You _ran!_ You never felt it, you never had those words taking over your body, you never –”

“You missed.”

Two words, and Cody’s world almost rocks apart. He blinks, his brain stuttering because he can still _see_ it. “What?”

“I never did figure out how he got off Utapau, but I saw security footage in the Temple, not three rotations later. Obi-Wan was there. You missed. You didn’t kill him.”

There’s some idiot screaming loudly, but Rex doesn’t seem to hear it, which means it’s all in his head. Fuck. He’s somehow not surprised. It takes him a bit to get that sound to quiet, a lot of deep breaths.

He gives his brother a haggard look. “Did you – Were you the one –?”

Rex shakes his head. “I got there as _Palpatine_ was leaving.” He spits the Emperor’s name, a rarely seen fury naked on his face. “Found signs of a fight – one _hell_ of a fight. Lightsabers.”

“But no body,” Cody guesses, not quite daring to hope, because if Obi-Wan survived once, then –

That hope crumples into ash as Rex shakes his head again. “No body. But I spent a lot of time looking for him. You mentioned you could track me for the first few months. He would have found me.”

“What makes you think he’d come looking?”

The look Rex gives him is full of sorrow, grief Cody doesn’t dare to show for a dead _Jedi_ , traitors to the Empire that they were. “He promised me. After the Hardeen incident, he _promised_ he’d come back to me if he could.”

The howling pain in Cody’s chest is back, and a part of him wants to demand things of Rex. Wants to know what makes him so fucking special, but –

He and the General were friends. Partners, in a sense; _brothers_ , in a sense, but Rex and the General had a different bond, and he always knew it.

Cody’s friendship hadn’t been enough to keep him from giving the order to fire.

Rex’s love hadn’t been enough to keep the General alive.

The old, familiar despair resettles on Cody’s shoulders. “What, some kind of blood promise or something?”

Rex’s face twists a little, deep grief and guilt making the lines on his face stand out more than they have in awhile. It’s pretty clear that this has been the man’s expression for at least months, probably longer. It’s easy to track the almost casual movement of his hand to a belt pouch as Rex sighs. “He…sent me a message. Right as that Hardeen _shit_ went down. I – Afterwards – ” He takes a deep breath and looks Cody in the eyes. “We’d find each other. He’d have come back, if he could.”

He tries so hard to not let jealousy swamp him.

The scuff of feet makes both clones turn, and Cody shrinks back a little from the tiny versions of his General. He’s pretty sure it’s the two from earlier – the short one, and the one that’s wide-eyed. Rex sighs and mutters something as he marches over, crouching down in front of them – both to talk, and to keep himself between Cody and the kids.

The taller one looks at Rex, chews his lip in indecision, then he sets his shoulders. The boy immediately flinches and his eyes snap over to Cody. He can’t help but think the kid heard him, the little hiss of shock at seeing _that_ gesture again, the sign that the damn fool was going to do something spectacular, and spectacularly stupid.

The kid probably heard Cody’s mind cursing and informing not-really-his-General NO.

Rex says something soft to the kid, who finally looks away from Cody long enough to murmur something. He can see Rex hesitate, then his brother’s hands clench and he swings to the side. The youngling steps cautiously around Rex and walks over to Cody, powder puff of hair a beacon of color over a pale face.

He’s crouching without really thinking about it. He’s meeting eyes that don’t have sorrow- or laugh-lines at the edges, eyes that have more blue than he recalls seeing.

The kid opens his mouth, and for a moment Cody doesn’t register the words, because the voice has the right lilt, and he can hear how it’ll deepen into what he remembers, what he destroyed, or maybe not but close enough and –

There’s a hand on his shoulder, and that worried expression has moved closer. “Your mind keeps screaming,” the boy repeats. “I could hear you on the shuttle.” Shame keeps him still, leaves him without words to say. The boy’s head tilts, and the messy hair fluffs to the side. “Why do you… _need_ us?”

He can see out of the corner of his eye how Rex has gone still, is watching with a fierce protectiveness, but Cody can’t look away. He doesn’t know what _to_ say. So he shrugs instead of talking about purpose, instead of discussing what he and his brothers were made for.

He shrugs, because otherwise if he opens his mouth he might start screaming for real.

The boy nods hesitantly, glancing over at Rex with a wide-eyed, almost terrified expression that cuts right through Cody. He reminds himself that no matter what other fuckery his brother is up to, this _is_ Rex, and – Hell, no one comes out of Kamino without scars.

The one that almost took his eye throbs in reminder as the child turns back to look Cody in the face. “Can –” For some reason the boy’s expression twists into a strange look, not quite a smile, not quite awkward sheepishness. “Can we keep you, too? Would…you want that?”

The broken thing in Cody’s chest writhes once more, shattering into further pieces. For once, it feels like a clean break. He puts a gentle, shaking hand on the kid’s shoulder and glares over at Rex. First time in awhile he’s gotten to exercise his Twi’leki, and he sprinkles the invective and his opinion of his brother’s shenanigans with Huttese and a few phrases he heard from General Kenobi but could never get a decent translation for. He doesn’t know, and doesn’t really care if Rex understands even a fraction of it, because his brother totally deserves it.

When he runs out of words, he gives a firm nod and looks down at the kid – only to blanch. Shit. That slightly confused look of intense concentration – “How many languages do you know?” he blurts out, suddenly wondering just what he’s getting into.

“Just two. But I think I need to remember some of that.”

The shorter kid nods, amusement mixing with fascination on his face.

Rex just looks resignedly bemused.

He takes a deep breath and nods again, trying to appear confident. “Yes, I want that.”

Oh, stars, the _smile_ he gets for that. It lights up the kid’s face, and he has never, ever thought that Obi-Wan Kenobi could or would look that damn _happy_.

He wants to do that a thousand times over.

Fucking Rex and his fucking insight and –

Cody takes the kid’s hand, smiling at him. “I’m Cody. Who’re you?”

Finally shy, the child ducks his head. “Four,” he declares softly. “I – I mean, I haven’t chosen a name, exactly, and –”

He nods, reminding himself not to clench at the small hand in his. They walk over to Rex, and the child pressed up against his side, that one too bold to need or want hand holding. Cody and the child exchange polite nods, though he can see the kid is actually kinda eager. Accepting.

Cody looks to Rex and raises a brow. “How much trouble are we in for?”

Rex has that wry grin again that he’s never trusted “Six.”

Cody stumbles to a halt, gaping at the madman before him. “Six,” he repeats, the small boy next to him pressing close. Cody looks down at the small being, then back up. “Six.” It took both him and Rex, at the peak of their abilities and with the might of the 212th and the 501st behind them, just to keep up with _one_ Obi-Wan – and yes, Skywalker as well.

Six clones of Obi-Wan. Stars and little gods. He can’t seem to stop himself, reaching down and running a light hand over Four’s hair, awed as the child cuddles closer to his leg. “You never do anything by halves, do you?”

Rex smiles at him, shrugging a bit awkwardly. “What are brothers for?”


End file.
